“I sought for a recognition of my equality with them,” he went on.  “I sought it from their men and from their women.  I hungered for it like a dog for a bone.  They would not give it—­neither their men, nor their women.  And all the while here were my own people willing at a sign to offer me their homage.”

He spoke in Pushtu, and Ahmed Ismail drank in every word.

“They wanted a leader, Huzoor,” he said.

“I turned away from them like a fool,” replied Shere Ali, “while I sought favours from the white women like a slave.”

“Your Highness shall take as a right what you sought for as a favour.”

“As a right?” cried Shere Ali, his heart leaping to the incense of Ahmed Ismail’s flattery.  “What right?” he asked, suddenly bending his eyes upon his companion.

“The right of a conqueror,” cried Ahmed Ismail, and he bowed himself again at his Prince’s feet.  He had spoken Shere Ali’s wild and secret thought.  But whereas Shere Ali had only whispered it to himself, Ahmed Ismail spoke it aloud, boldly and with a challenge in his voice, like one ready to make good his words.  An interval of silence followed, a fateful interval as both men knew.  Not a sound from without penetrated into that little shuttered room, but to Shere Ali it seemed that the air throbbed and was heavy with unknown things to come.  Memories and fancies whirled in his disordered brain without relation to each other or consequence in his thoughts.  Now it was the two Englishmen seated side by side behind the ropes and quietly talking of what was “not good for us,” as though they had the whole of India, and the hill-districts, besides, in their pockets.  He saw their faces, and, quietly though he stood and impassive as he looked, he was possessed with a longing to behold them within reach, so that he might strike them and disfigure them for ever.  Now it was Violet Oliver as she descended the steps into the great courtyard of the Fort, dainty and provoking from the arched slipper upon her foot to the soft perfection of her hair.  He saw her caught into the twilight swirl of pale white faces and so pass from his sight, thinking that at the same moment she passed from his life.  Then it was the Viceroy in his box at the racecourse and all Calcutta upon the lawn which swept past his eyes.  He saw the Eurasian girls prinked out in their best frocks to lure into marriage some unwary Englishman.  And again it was Colonel Dewes, the man who had lost his place amongst his own people, even as he, Shere Ali, had himself.  A half-contemptuous smile of pity for a moment softened the hard lines of his mouth as he thought upon that forlorn and elderly man taking his loneliness with him into Cashmere.

“That shall not be my way,” he said aloud, and the lines of his mouth hardened again.  And once more before his eyes rose the vision of Violet Oliver.

Ahmed Ismail had risen to his feet and stood watching his Prince with eager, anxious eyes.  Shere Ali crossed to the table and turned down the lamp, which was smoking.  Then he went to the window and thrust the shutters open.  He turned round suddenly upon Ahmed.